{"id":211099,"date":"2025-04-10T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/when-einstein-walked-with-godel"},"modified":"2025-04-10T13:15:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T18:15:00","slug":"when-einstein-walked-with-godel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/when-einstein-walked-with-godel","title":{"rendered":"When Einstein Walked with G\u00f6del"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/when-einstein-walked-with-godel2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Parul Sehgal of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_New_York_Times\" title=\"The New York Times\">The New York Times<\/a> stated \u201cIn these pieces, plucked from the last 20 years, Holt takes on infinity and the infinitesimal, the illusion of time, the birth of eugenics, the so-called new atheism, smartphones and distraction. It is an elegant history of recent ideas. There are a few historical correctives \u2014 he dismantles the notion that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ada_Lovelace\" title=\"Ada Lovelace\">Ada Lovelace<\/a>, the daughter of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lord_Byron\" title=\"Lord Byron\">Lord Byron<\/a>, was the first computer programmer. But he generally prefers to perch in the middle of a muddle \u2014 say, the string theory wars \u2014 and hear evidence from both sides without rushing to adjudication. The essays orbit around three chief concerns: How do we conceive of the world (metaphysics), how do we know what we know (epistemology) and how do we conduct ourselves (ethics)\u201d.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-6\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/When_Einstein_Walked_with_G%C3%B6del#cite_note-6\"> [ 6 ]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Steven Poole of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Wall_Street_Journal\" title=\"The Wall Street Journal\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a> commented \u201c\u2026this collection of previously published essays by Jim Holt, who is one of the very best modern science writers\u201d.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-7\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/When_Einstein_Walked_with_G%C3%B6del#cite_note-7\"> [ 7 ]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/w\/index.php?title=When_Einstein_Walked_with_G%C3%B6del&action=edit&section=3\" title=\"Edit section: References\"> edit<\/a> ].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parul Sehgal of The New York Times stated \u201cIn these pieces, plucked from the last 20 years, Holt takes on infinity and the infinitesimal, the illusion of time, the birth of eugenics, the so-called new atheism, smartphones and distraction. It is an elegant history of recent ideas. There are a few historical correctives \u2014 he [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,30,1512,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-ethics","category-mobile-phones","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}